Page:Dante and His Circle, with the Italian Poets Preceding Him.djvu/55

Rh Doth not the sweet light strike upon his eyes?'

When he perceived a certain hesitance

Which I was making ere I should reply,

He fell supine, and forth appeared no more."

Dante, however, conveys his answer afterwards to the spirit of Guido's father, through another of the condemned also related to Guido, Farinata degli Uberti, with whom he has been speaking meanwhile:—

Then I, as in compunction for my fault,

Said: 'Now then shall ye tell that fallen one

His son is still united with the quick.

And, if I erst was dumb to the response,

I did it, make him know, because I thought

Yet on the error you have solved for me.

('s Translation.)

The date which Dante fixes for his vision is Good Friday of the year 1300. A year later, his answer must have been different. The love and friendship of his Vita Nuova had then both left him. For ten years Beatrice Portinari had been dead, or (as Dante says in the Convito) "lived in heaven with the angels and on earth with his soul." And now, distant and probably estranged from him, Guido Cavalcanti was gone too.

Among the Tales of Franco Sacchetti, and in the Decameron of Boccaccio, are two anecdotes relating to Guido. Sacchetti tells us how, one day that he was intent on a game at chess, Guido (who is described as "one who perhaps had not his equal in Florence") was disturbed by a child playing about, and threatened punishment if the noise continued. The child, however, managed slily to nail Guido's coat to the chair on which he sat, and so had the laugh against him when he rose soon afterwards to fulfil his threat. This may serve as an amusing instance of Guido's hasty temper, but is rather a disappointment after its magniloquent heading, which sets forth how "Guido Cavalcanti, being a man of great valour and a philosopher, is defeated by the cunning of a child."